Bad news: Charlie Brooker’s Review of the Year 2017 is no more. Although another satirical look back over the last 12 months akin to his previous annual Wipe shows had been planned, Brooker has been forced to cancel the project just four and a half weeks before it would normally have aired on New Year’s Eve.

Advertisement

And it’s not because Trump’s inauguration, numerous terrorist attacks across the globe, the Oscar Best Picture mess-us, Hurricane Irma, Grenfell Tower, C4’s take on Bake Off, #SaltBae, the Harvey Weinstein scandal and Love Island have meant it’s been an unusually quiet year. Brooker has said on Twitter that 2017 Wipe has been cancelled as he is behind on scripts and show developments elsewhere. “Contrary to my optimistic delusions it turns out I can’t do 400 things at once,” he explained.

Got some good news and bad news. Bad news is no 2017 Wipe. Was set to do it but ran out of road. Am way behind on scripts / dev elsewhere and contrary to my optimistic delusions it turns out I can’t do 400 things at once. [1/3]

However, Brooker’s announcement also came with the news of a Philomena Cunk series “a 5-part history of our glorious nation starring Philomena”, covering “the WHOLE of British history from the Big Bang to Brexit. In five half-hourly chunks”.

More good news to follow soon. That’s it! Now enjoy Christmas / life / Royal Wedding mania. [3/3]

Brooker has delivered a review of the year since 2006, which was packaged in a half an hour show until 2010. He said on Twitter he had considered returning to a 30-minute format for 2017, but realised condensing the year into such a short slot would be “impossible madness”.

We explored possibility of doing a 30m version but realised cramming it all in to half the runtime would be impossible madness, take longer, and prob be a bit shit.